Archive for the ‘Heinrich Detering’ Category

At the same time as I bought the beautiful little Lyrics book (below) at Dussmann on Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse, I also picked up the earlier companion volume, Bob Dylan, a monograph covering Dylan’s album output, and also by Heinrich Detering.

It’s also a beautiful little artefact, clearly designed as a companion volume.

On a recent trip to Berlin – surely Europe’s most exciting city – I picked up Bob Dylan Lyrics, a tiny book which reproduces the (English) lyrics of about 50 songs, with a short essay on each.

I bought the book simply because it looks so good – of all the volumes on my Bob shelves, it’s one of the most striking.

(Like most readers of The Dylan Daily, I already have all the lyrics in the official books and would struggle to understand the German text anyway, so I bought it purely as an attractive artefact.)

It’s always been a puzzle just how listeners can fully appreciate great writing in a language other than their mother tongue – for example, my French is fairly good, but there’s no way I appreciate the subtlety of great French writers like Camus, Baudelaire or Balzac.

This book shows the way, by translating key words and phrases, especially those which might prove difficult for German readers.